History Strongest Shinobi
by whodidthewhatnow
Summary: Potential unrealized is the same as no potential. I didn't knew the meaning of those words until I died in the Fourth Shinobi War. Now in a new world I try to reach my full potential while fighting the local threats, hopefully to become someone of importance in the future.
1. Chapter 1

Unrealized potential is the same as no potential.

I heard those words before but was too stupid, too lazy to truly act on it the first time. I was born in the Land of Fire, in the Hidden Village of Leaves, or Konoha for short. I became a genin at twelve, failed my first jonin sensei test, then became a chunin at sixteen shortly before Pain invasion. Afterwards I vowed to become stronger, not to be helpless, but a few weeks later, though it felt like months, the Forth Shinobi War started and I died fighting the White Zetsu army. I couldn't even kill one of the bastards and at best my death served to stall their attack from reaching someone that mattered.

Thus ended my first life in an unremarkable note, as one of the various casualties of the largest conflict recorded in history.

Then I woke up, and things got strange.

~~O~~

I was five years old and I had got a hang of my new life. My father worked as salariman while my mother was a housewife, and while we didn't had a luxurious life at least we didn't starved which was definitely a step up from being an orphan in the Elemental Nations. I had reincarnated into what I initially believed to be several decades to several hundred years in the future, but I was soon disabused of that notion when I learned that this world had no notion of chakra and the world map looked wrong somehow. I knew that for the world to have changed that much either someone on the same level of the Sage of Six Paths had appeared in the past and did a massive landscape change for no reason or several millions of years had passed, and I felt that both notions where unlikely, as much as 'reincarnated into another world' felt impossible.

It looked like some of those cults that preached that chakra was a gift bestowed by the Sage of Six Paths to humanity, instead of him merely being the first to harness it's power, were indeed correct. It stood to reason from that fact that chakra could be inherited by reincarnations or by genetics, which it was what eventually made chakra spread across the world through humanity and all life forms in the planet.

Technically speaking if I ever gift chakra to the world I can call myself the Sage of Six Paths, but unless I get at least Kage level those are shoes too big for me to fill.

At that age I didn't tried to act like a five year old, I had already passed that and while a shinobi greatest weapon was deception I didn't want to lie to my parents about my abilities and intellect. Besides there was much for me to learn and not enough time.

In hindsight I should have been more discreet, but what's done is done.

I did have friends while growing up, one in particular could be called that ever elusive 'childhood friend' that I never quite had while growing up the first time.

Her name is Nanjo Kisara, and I had meet her when she was taking a walk with her cat (seriously, how did she managed to make that work) and she was attacked by a stray dog. Surprisingly her cat tried to defend her and was ready to die for its owner when I showed up and drove off the dog with a couple of throw kitchen knifes I had appropriated from my home. She thanked me while in tears and hugging her cat, and I asked if she wanted to be my friend.

Thankfully she accepted.

~~O~~

My shinobi training had progressed well since I had started it ever since I could walk. At first nothing too fancy other than feeling the flow of chakra in my body and using the leaf ticking exercise to learn chakra control. My parent really liked me on that period because I was a very quiet kid, with smaller bouts of activity as I trained my body to gain strength, speed and coordination. I also training the basic three and some other necessary skills in secret, and I think that I could have graduated the academy by the time I hit six years old.

Of course I didn't get cocky and used the extra time to perfect the skills I already had and to learn more about the world.

It was around that time I went to school even if my parents knew I was much more advanced than the other kids, but my parents wanted me to have friends of my own age. It didn't worked very well, I mean I played and studied with them, but I was more like their big brother than their friends, you know? The only one that felt like a friend in that whole school was Kisara, thank the heavens for me to be enrolled in the same school as her.

She was smart for her age, and had a fiery nature on her that reminded me more or less about Ino, when she was still the popular, kind girl I meet at first and not the loathsome Sasuke fangirl she had became near the end of the academy years. It was after spending a year as her friend that I entertained the notion of telling her my secret, which was strange as all hell since I didn't wanted to tell my parents that secret yet. Then again maybe I thought that her being a child would mean she could believe. Then again she was a really cute kid in a little sister sort of way so that might have influenced my thinking a bit.

When I entered my second year her pet cat had became sick and eventually died, making her sad and silent for a whole week before I caved in and told her my secret after making her swear a pinky promise not to tell anyone. I showed her my abilities and got a predictable, but still appreciated amount of awe from her.

Then of course came the request for me to train her. Of course, after all what kind of kid would reject something shiny?

I fought with myself for a while. Technically academy could start as early as six and as late as eight so I had enough time to teach her, but if I did that I had to first share my chakra with her and hope that she managed to develop her chakra pathways and chakra gates in a reasonable timeframe.

In the end she managed to worm down through my defenses and I relented, and I started teaching her. In the end I'm glad that I did, since ever since them we had a very strong bond, something that I didn't knew I had missed all my life. Not only that but she took to my lessons, even the more boring ones like meditation, like a fish to the water and in record time she learned all the information a first year academy student were expected to know.

Life was starting to look really good and I was really living up to my potential as the first chakra user and first true shinobi of this world, meaning I could become someone that mattered, someone important, someone great instead of being a lazy ass nobody.

It was a that point that life took offense to my good cheer, and both my parents died.


	2. Chapter 2

I never quite understood why the shinobi code had a mention for us to 'kill our emotions'. That must be because I never really lost anything, but myself. Lost opportunities, lost innocence, loss of life.

It was only when my parents died in this new world that I understood what that meant. It wasn't the nearly literal 'become an emotionless machine' some older shinobi talked about, but rather it had to do with the etymology of the word shinobi and one of it's meanings. Written as 'blade' above 'heart', it could be meant as 'killing your heart' which came the whole 'killing the emotion bit', but I read on the dictionary one the more archaic uses of the word which was 'to endure'.

Not to become 'unfeeling', but to 'endure hardships' instead.

Then again I also didn't think much about it until my parents had died.

My parents didn't had close relatives, they were both single children and their parents, my grandparents, had already died before I was born on both sides of my family. I probably had some more relatives like granduncles or distant second to third cousins, but nobody from my supposed extended family came to the funeral, only coworkers and friends of the family appeared.

There I felt numb, empty and alone in a way that I had never felt before, and for an instant I realized how Sasuke had felt during his childhood, except I realized he felt probably worse due to the circumstances of his family's death. It would be frightening how much I could sympathize with the emo bastard in the coming years.

Kisara was there too, but I didnt talked with her the whole funeral which I believe made her become worried about me.

I keep being an unsocial bastard for a whole week afterwards when I returned to school. I wasn't exactly rude to anyone, but I shunned social interaction with everyone, even Kisara during that time. It was then that she dragged me to the rooftop and slapped me silly, which more or less broke my haze back then, before she hugged me and said everything would be ok. I think it was the first time I had ever acted my physical age as I had finally bawled at the death of my parents, and she said that 'big sister Kisara' would help me.

Did I mention that she's older than me? No? Well, she is.

Heaven's I don't know what I could do without that girl.

Anyway it was a that point that I got my shit back together, and just in time too, since I would soon find my first great enemy.

Child Social Service.

Back in Konoha there were both orphanages and a system for kids to live alone, with genin teams taking care of the kid until he can learn enough responsibility, roughly when he's at a age to go to the academy. It made my life both hard and easier than being in the orphanage.

It was also a insanely better system than what the social service wanted me to do. Basically it wanted me to go to an orphanage of another city to become a warden of the state, or to put me into adoption into another family somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Sure Tokyo wasn't exactly the middle of nowhere, but I didn't wanted to get away from my city right now.

That's why I asked a huge favor to Kisara, so she could ask her parents to 'adopt' me until I could reach a minimal age for emancipation. I was so desperate that I even entertained using genjutsu on them for they to accept, but my friend used her dreaded 'cute kitty eyes no jutsu' and as an only child could she had her parents like putty in her hands.

Thus I became her sort of brother, though I still retained my own surname.

Hmm? Didn't I mention my name before? Well it is simply Fujimura Tobio, which was weird since it was also the same name I had before reincarnating, sans family name of course.

Anyway they put the house to rent after we cleaned everything up and send some of my parents stuff to storage, with only a few things with me when I went to my new home where I would share a room with Kisara. It wasn't in the original plan, but it felt logical for the adults to do that, and thinking back it was also convenient since it allowed us time to train inside her room without being disturbed. Besides we were only kids so it wasn't inappropriate to sleep on the same room. At least that's what I keep telling myself during that time.

With my new life set, I went back to a routine of both training and studying of this new world.

~~O~~

When I was ten and Kisara was eleven her parents wanted her to start piano lessons while she wanted to train martial arts if she was forced to do anything. Of course I trained her in taijutsu and taught her the basic academy style which she took like a fish to the water. Seriously sometimes I think she's more talented on shinobi arts than me, then again it was a good thing to keep me on my toes so I had to train extra hard for her not to catch up with me.

Anyway her parents relenteled and allowed her to start training Taekwondo, which while a good enough martial art it was sadly lacking in most methods of shinobi combat. Even the Strong Fist which was heavily geared towards pure hand-to-hand combat wasn't so restricted and specialized, and differently from Jyuuken it didn't used chakra to turn the opponent's inside into mush. Still it was something that she enjoyed and soon I also started practicing it. Well, less me 'practicing it' and more like 'using them as guinea pigs to test my skills'. Technically I had the 'worst' forms of the class, with Kisara coming a very close second, but I also never losing a single sparring match, aside from the occasional draws and near loses from Kisara.

Aside from that we keep training our shinobi skills, with me introducing her to throw weapons were for once she didn't took it nearly as well as before. In fact seeing her struggle with it made me a bit more confident in my own abilities, though I felt like a douche during those times. I also taught her the basic academy jutsus, other essential shinobi skills and some small genjutsu and how to dispel them. At that point I was sure we could clearly pass the academy test and graduate into genins, with my chakra reserves closer to chunin at the time compared with the genin reserves of Kisara.

But that was alright, were were still growing up so there was plenty of time to enlarge our chakra reserves.

Still I decided to go to the next step and made our own forehead protectors shaped in the same way as Konoha protectors, which I wore in my neck most of the time and her wore in her tight.

It was then that I started to act as a shinobi and start taking missions. D-rank at first which were as exciting as watching paint dry, which I actually had to do that a few times, but I used those opportunities to make contacts and friendships that could be useful in a few years down the line.

As for Kisara's parents they liked the fact that I was doing something productive instead of becoming a delinquent of shorts, like joining a gang or start one myself or something.

It was when I became thirteen and Kisara was fourteen that things started to get serious.


	3. Chapter 3

Kisara parents told me one of those days that for a long time they had been having a legal battle with my supposed family so they could become my new guardians, which immediately put me on edge. I had already told them I had no close relatives and no one to take me in, something they also remembered due to the lack of family during the funeral. Normally they wouldn't tell me that in order not to upset the 'kid', but apparently now they were on the losing end of the conflict and soon my would be guardians would take custody of me.

Thinking fast I shuffled through all my contacts over the course of the hundreds of D-ranks I performed until then to get legal advice, and I got a good enough help for me to enact my next plan.

I will spare you the details, but with the help of my contacts I managed to get the change in legal guardians rejected. I most certainly didn't made a victory dance over that, mostly because I suck at dancing, and because my would be guardians were also present when the judge revealed my destiny. Their expression was level, but if you had a little experience you could distinguish how a blank stare differed from one to another, and they clearly had the 'I'm trying not to scream in rage' look down pat.

Still, I wanted to know about their motives and try to figure out why they spent so much time and effort trying to get me. Apparently they had been trying to get me as their 'child' ever since my parents died. Of course shinobi paranoia kicked in, but I didn't had much to work with so I let it pass. Still it also pointed to a glaring hole in my little endeveadour, the absolutely lack of high level information. While I had made a couple of important contacts while I made my D-ranks it simply wasn't enough for me.

I had to go to the next level.

~~O~~

One day I had caught Kisara fuming and leaking tears of rage, and I asked her what it was. Apparently after one of the spars against an upper ranked student to determine who would go to the tournament, which she won of course, she overheard her fallen opponent talk with the instructor about how 'he let her win because she was a girl'. Now by that point I had told Kisara about my previous world, and how Kunoichi were just as deadly as Shinobi, and how the last Kage of the village was both a woman and a very famous war hero from a previous war and a genius in her own right, meaning that regardless of me always being at least a step ahead of her in all shinobi disciplines I would never look down on her (unless she suddenly started acting like a fan girl but I was spared of that development).

Maybe it was the level of respect I had for Kisara abilities, maybe it was the frustration from the envy acquired from the male students she throughly beat in spars, maybe it was the fact that the instructor was actually buying into that bullshit, but she said she finally had enough and she quit the dojo, with me following right behind.

Which was good in a way since we could practice more our shinobi disciplines and we had already learned enough how to deal with civilian grade, non-militia combatants. Which was pretty much a waste in my opinion.

Either way I told her that soon we would be starting doing C-ranks in pairs or even solo, and I told her the harsh reality of being a shinobi. Granted we didn't had the Daimyo authorization to act both as a police, jury, judge and executioners when dealing with bandits and crime in itself was an entirely different kettle of fish from back the Elemental Nations aside from big cities, but I told her of the true dangers of being a shinobi, it's responsibilities and sacrifices we had to make, and that now would be the last chance she had to back down from all this and lead a civilian life.

She was a bit scared at first but pressed on, not wanting to get away from all this, which made me smile at her determination.

With that in mind I had our first C-rank prepared. Under a henge I had found information about drug dealers in the city, and our mission was to dismantle their operation and confiscate their funds and some equipment for our own use after calling the police.

Good thing I had already made storage scrolls myself, I wasn't a seal master by any means, but once you become a chunin you are more or less required to attend seminars on certain subjects to prepare you for the responsibilities of the rank and to allow you to grow to the power and versatility required for us.

We spent a couple of days doing recon on our target first, and we were glad that Kisara parents were working long hours in the night allowing us to sneak past them without being noticed.

The actual takedown was rather clean and easy, but that's to be expected for this rank which while it had chance of combat it was only against civilians, and even if guns were a different beast from kunai, shuriken and arrows, it was still a human who aimed those things and I drilled a lot about dodging and avoiding being on the line of fire so we were mostly safe from injuries, but still we were careful since there was no medic nin to patch us if we screwed up.

We went home richer, better armed and with the start of a reputation in the making.

But I knew that life had its ups and downs, and I was expecting the other shoe to drop.

I wasn't disappointed, but this time I was prepared.


	4. Chapter 4

My second C-rank was solo since at the time Kisara had to go visit a couple of relatives. I begged it off and had the house all for me for the night, which I used to prepare myself.

I was slowly gathering materials and tools to try my hand at poison making, once more I wasn't a master by any means but I had studied the subject a lot and even had my life saved a couple of times from a well placed senbon or a glancing shuriken hit. Sadly I didn't had anything other than repurposed kitchen knifes I had sharpened, but they will have to do for now. The current poisons load out I had were fast agent paralytic poisons since if I wanted to kill something I could just jam my improvised kunai on their throats.

I was feeling the next thing to invincible at the time, you have to understand, after all I had no evidence that this world had anything that could keep up with shinobi in an one-to-one basis. While I made sure to be prepared to any eventuality, I was mostly expecting things to escalate quickly with special forces coming in or something so it was mostly evasion and dodge training I had focused aside from basic training.

With that in mind I went to my next target, a weapons deal going on that I was going to bust. While this kind of operation would be a high C-rank requiring a team to minimize risks, I was feeling pretty damn good about myself so I decided to risk it.

Once I got there I saw there were at least twenty armed thugs guarding the place, and felt like this was going to be tricky. Still I put my stealth and jutsus to work and managed to cull down those numbers to half. Of course by that time the dealers were at high alert so I engaged the rest head on.

Since those I couldn't just stealth knock down anymore I had to go for the kill, specially since they were armed with guns, but everything went fine with no one being able to lock down on me and I swiftly killed or disabled the rest, and with a mighty throw I attacked the two dealers with my kunai, thinking that would be it, but a blur appeared on their side and someone caught the throw weapons.

"Looks like your operation had a little rat sneaking by", said a large man around his thirties with a musclebound frame. To put it simply he was HUGE, even accounting our sizes differences.

"Master Jagi! Please help us!" Said one of the last two remaining weapons dealer before starting to run. I of course went after then to complete the mission, but this Jagi appeared in front of me.

"I'm your opponent midget!" He said while he stood imposingly in front of me. Of course I would have none of his bullshit and used Kawarimi to swap myself with a nearby table, handseals already forming in a blur as I finished my jutsu.

"Suiton: Teppodama!" I spit two water balls going almost as fast as bullets, which crashed on the back of my targets, instantly breaking their spines and probably killing them. Jagi could only stare at me in shock before quickly recomposing himself.

"What manner of freak are you?" He said in a level tone, "guess I'm going to keep you alive after all. Yami always have good bounties on unusual martial arts and you're definitely unusual."

I didn't talked of course, didn't wanted to waste my time with him, though inwardly I was cautious. He could move fast enough to block my weapons, who knows how strong he really was. This had suddenly went from C-rank straight into B-rank, but instead of doing the smart thing I decided to humor him and fight him 'fair' in order to see where I stood in this new world.

He took a step, and in a blink of the eye he was already in front of me with his arm extended to punch me, and I had to use chakra to dodge the attack. He was fast! Faster than I thought it was possible without chakra, and as I keep dodging his attacks by a hair breath I also noticed he was strong enough to make huge indent marks on the nearby containers. I tried to counter his attacks and fight back, but he was good in his chosen style, dodging and parrying my attacks with ease before countering them.

I took a fist to the face and was sent crashing down on another container, and before I could unstuck myself he came over me to finish me off. Only a well timed kawarimi saved my life, and I sent another teppodama towards him, which he had the gall to take head on! Fortunately for my ego he didn't take it so harmlessly, but the C-rank jutsu wasn't enough to seriously injury him. "Your little trick is quite good, I admit that I was curious to know how it stacked up to my resilience, but now that I know it's not enough to defeat me you lost midget!"

I sighed at him. He was in shinobi terms at least a heavy combat, taijutsu specialist chunin in power and skill while I was still trying to break away from genin level, chakra reserves aside. I had to admit, things where going terrible for me at the time, and this would be when my team mates come and help me or I use something with more punch than kunai in copious amount, but sadly my explosive tags were still too weak to properly field.

How troublesome.

As he came closer, I ran through a couple of handseals and our eyes meet.

~~O~~

Jagi had punched me, sending me flying towards the railing and I grabbed it trying not to fall down. My whole body was hurting and the last attack was too much for me.

"Guess you're done for midget." He said while grabbing my arm and pulling me up, and I could hear the grinding sound of my arm bones breaking. "You fought well, but not well enough. Too bad I didn't had things on camera otherwise it will be harder for them to believe me, but I'm sure they can get their hands on your secrets soon enough."

I couldn't help but laugh at his threat.

"What's so funny."

"It's cute, you know? How you think you have won when it barely started."

"Oh, I've got to hear this. How do you expect to get out of this?"

I didn't answer and just lifted my other arm and pocked at the arm that was holding me up. It instantly swelled and twisted, blood flowing from the skin bending in unnatural ways, earning a howl of pain from my opponent. I didn't let it go, and soon I was after him, pocking him on the leg and having a similar result, then on his other arm, then on his chest.

"GAAAHHH!" He yelled in pain while panting, "what kind of monster are you?"

I didn't answer, just slowly walking towards him with my grin becoming inhumanly wider than before, until I finally poked him on the head and the side of his cranium swelled and swelled until it burst into a shower of gore.

~~O~~

As I watched the man kneeling in front of me with his eyes glazed, I took one of my knifes, a very large cleaver knife I bought under henge, and with copious amount of chakra on my arms I swung my blade through his neck, neatly decapitating him and ending his threat once and for all.

I quickly found out that genjutsu in this world worked differently, mostly because the native people in this world didn't had chakra. They would all auto-dispel once a certain amount of time passed based on the jutsu rank, unless I targeted Kisara which genjutsu worked on her like it should. However what probably made them invaluable was the fact that I doubt anyone knew how to dispel it with 'Kai', and not everyone will reach the conclusion that a large amount of pain will dispel it. Specially if I keep this trump card a secret.

Still to know that there were someone stronger than me individually was a good wake up call for me to step up my and Kisara's training. If it were her she would have been definitely killed. Still it gave me a bit of anticipation about what the future would hold, and some ideas on how to proceed from there.

But first, to collect my bounty. C-rank doesn't pay for themselves, after all.


	5. Chapter 5

To say that Kisara was unamused was a severe understatement. In fact, I'm fairly sure she was angry.

"WHY DID YOU GO ALONE YOU DUMBASS!"

More like absolutely livid to be honest.

"YOU COULD HAVE DIED, YOU KNOW? DIED!" She yelled on my ear and I had a response to her, but once looking at her face I saw tears streaking down her cheek and my response died on my lips. Instead I turned to face her fully and hugged her, surprising my friend.

"Sorry I worried you", I whispered to her, and she reluctantly returned the hug. We were like that for a few moments before I had her at arms length, "but I told you already about myself right? About my life before being reborn."

She nodded, and I still have my doubts if she truly believes me or think I'm 'merely' an eccentric genius who stumbled into a previously unknown energy source. Hmm, if you put it like that reincarnation doesn't sound so incredulous. "Before coming here, I was a chunin. A chunin is a ninja that accepts greater responsibilities and is tasked to see the mission through, no matter what kind of hardships and dangers might lie ahead. Those who doesn't have the courage to go on even when their life is in danger doesn't deserve to be chunins, and I had already passed that test a long time ago. I also swore an oath that I would become stronger, better, to see my full potential realized and I don't plan to die so easily."

At this I let myself smirk a bit. "Kill me once, shame on you. Kill me twice shame on me."

"Moron", she said while punching me on the arm, but she looked calmer now. "just try to be more careful alright?"

"I admit I was a bit cocky", she replied with a sarcastic 'a bit' but I ignored her for now, "but I didn't expected someone like Jagi to appear, and I need to find more information on people like him because I doubt he was unique, or even the best example of what the natives of this world can do. I think they exist in secret and as a rule aren't affiliated with the government since I doubt the world government wouldn't want to have as many supersoldiers in their employ as humanly possible."

"That makes sense, but what are you going to do?"

I sighed, knowing there would be a lot of work in the future. "For now? Try to gather more information. It's not my specialty but I know a trick or two, and I do have some minor experience gathering contacts together."

I heard an unlady like snort from my friend. "I really can't believe you managed to pull that off with the judge. Who would have thought that a kid manage to pull strings behind the scene?"

I smiled. "A cute, hardworking kid liked by the neighbourhood and beyond against relatives he never knew existed that wanted to take him away from a positive home environment? If things had gone any better they would be put in jail."

~~O~~

We continued training and doing missions. I made sure Kisara would perform a couple of D-ranks, after all if I had to do them she sure as hell would, with the occasional C-rank I performed alongside her.

Our information network started to slowly grow, picking up prostitutes, low ranking Yakuza members, gang members, store owners, drug dealers and blue collar workers. We were losing more money than we were gathering with the informants, but that's what happens when you don't have an infrastructure to aid you. With that in mind we started advertising our services in the underworld to gain more money and soon we got our first 'proper' C-rank mission in the form of acting as bodyguards to a group of Yakuza specialized in gambling to make sure nothing would go wrong when two factions would confront each other in a 'honorable gambling'.

Apparently the two factions would play high stakes mahjong with each other and we were there to make sure the other side didn't do anything funny or doesn't pay them. The Yakuza would bring their own protection detail but two of them were home due to injuries and we were asked to stand in for them. We had already spread our abilities and names for a while so they knew what we were capable off, sans any mention of ninjutsu.

~~O~~

"Those are the two ninjas we hired?" Asked one of the black suit Yakuza, "a brat and a girl? Are you fucking with us?"

I let Kisara talk since her voice wasn't so obviously young like mine anymore. "I assure you we're what you're asked for. I'm genin Neko and this is chunin Kitsune", she supplied and I nodded. While we didn't had the special porcelain mask the ANBU had, we wore full body concealment clothing like the 'ninjas' of old under our more casual clothes while hiding our hair and faces.

Of course, the group wasn't very impressed with us, but soon the Kumicho of the group appeared and took a good look at us. The man had a balding head and was a bit overweight, having a grandfatherly air to him but I knew this was a criminal boss that probably had ordered the deaths of several people already. "They must be from Yami. Those group sometimes employ young children in their ranks, but their skill is real." He said towards us.

We had heard of Yami of course, some kind of boogie man that tried to control the underworld in the region with whispers of controlling Japan entire underworld. We didn't had much info about Yami but even I knew it was a bad idea to associate myself with this organization, specially when we were so weak. "We are not part of Yami." Kisara answered. "Think of us as an up and coming independent organization."

The Kumicho nodded. "Then you wouldn't mind if I test your abilities? I am paying premium for your services after all."

I nodded and the Kumicho gave the go ahead. Just as I saw the first one go for his concealed pistol I was already on him, and I hit him on the stomach hard making him double over. The rest of the group was practically moving in slow motion as I quickly disabled them one by one with more strikes on their mid sections. I made sure to hold back enough against them since we had a job to do, but it was a good way to show our credentials to him.

The Kumicho was unmoved by the display, as if he was expecting it. "Good, better than I was expecting even. Though I'm not sure if your skills will be necessary tonight since our opponent is as honorable a they can get, but it's always good enough to have competent backup." He turned and left us to our own devices while we waited for the cars to get ready. The other blacksuits looked at us with fear in their eyes but that was alright in my book.

The mission itself was boring with nothing exciting happened. The game went in our favor and for a moment I thought we would need to act, but the opposing Kumicho simply bowed his head and brought the money to us. When we got our money we also got more names where we could show our trade and gain more clients and possible more contacts.

It was a good thing that we live in the age of the internet, otherwise I have no idea how we would manage this kind of stuff, though we had to make sure not to access our shinobi e-mail account from our house.

The only annoyance we had was that the police was after us, and since we didn't had any corrupt officers in our payroll yet they will keep investigating our actions normally. Something to work for in the future.

~~O~~

I was fourteen and Kisara was fiftenn, and our lives had taken to the next level.

Not like THAT. Who do you think I am? Jiraya? The man was a very strong Shinobi but he was more famous for his books during his later years than his shinobi prowess. And the peeping, all the peeping. But I digress.

We had performed at least two C-ranks per month making sure they could be completed in a single night, only taking longer lasting missions when both of Kisara parents went to business trips. I was glad that they thought of us so highly to allow us to have free reign in the house during those periods, which was also highly convenient too.

Our training had also progressed well and I felt like I had achieved the same level of skill as when I had became a chunin, though my chakra reserves where much greater than before. In no time I would be able to use some of my more chakra intensive jutsus in my admitedly small arsenal. As for Kisara she was progressing amazingly well, already past being an elite genin level in skill though she lacked a bit experience against higher level opponents that wasn't me. She also didn't performed her first kill yet and I was wracking my brain to figure out how to properly introduce her to it in a more safe environment and in a way that doesn't paint me like a crazy psychopath. Perhaps a well placed low level assassination was in order for her.

Our money reserve was starting to swell enough allowing us to get started the police problem when someone had approached Kisara. Apparently she had 'unmatched potential for a girl', which both infuriated her and made her curious. Apparently there was a gang that was recruiting talented fighters in order to become the 'strongest' in the region.

We talked a bit and we decided that Kisara should infiltrate this gang to see what this was all about, and perhaps inside there work on some of our secondary goals as a Clan in the making.

The gang that recruited her?

One called Ragnarok.


	6. Chapter 6

**Kisara POV**

I looked around at the place they brought me. Didn't even blindfold me or something, banking on their superior numbers to be able to beat me up if I suddenly felt like betraying them, thinking the threat of physical pain being enough to prevent me from getting any ideas.

The fools, all of them. While I didn't had any anti-torture and interrogation training yet, something that Tobio mentioned but was quite reticent to try without a medic nin in hand, but I'm sure I can endure anything they can throw at me on their level and what I can't endure I can escape from.

"This is Freya", said one of the girls alongside me as she introduced us, "one of Ragnarok founding members and it's Deadly Fists".

'Freya' nodded to me and approached from the chair -slash- throne she had going on for her. "I heard about you being a very talented taekwondo practitioner from one of our recruits, even if she told us your stance was a bit unusual." As she said that someone else stepped into the room and I recognized her.

"Shiratori? You're part of Ragnarok too?" Shiratori was one of my friends back from the dojo, and while I told her what forced me to quit the place and she was appreciably upset for it, she quit the place for different circumstances. Last I heard she goes to another dojo that is lead by a female ex-olympic participant.

"It's been a while Kisara", she said with a smile and I couldn't help but smile back. I had missed the girl this past year since I was too busy to go and visit her just to relax and catch up. If anything this assignment wouldn't be nearly as bad as I thought.

Then I remembered about the dangers of infiltration missions, specially possibly long term ones where the infiltrated targets weren't blatant scum and villainy I wouldn't bat an eye about gaining their trust to betray them later. The possibility to empathize with the people or organization sent to infiltrate was present, and while I would never betray Tobio to a bunch of delinquents it could make me hesitate if I ever try to fight against former friends.

Well, on that case I was fortunate that one of my missions here was to try and subvert the gang from within and try to make my own contacts and loyal followers so when we inevitably break down I gain both more manpower to our operations and weaken Ragnarok overall power. It's a good plan that relies on me alone, and damn if I'm not going to see it through.

I approached my friend and gave her a hug, startling her before she returned it. "I'm glad you're here", I didn't even had to lie on that one, "it kind of put me at ease knowing you're here, after all you aren't the type to join a gang if they're scum on earth."

The taller girl gave me a shy smile before walking towards the other girls, probably recruits or lower ranking members. "Well, I had my own reasons to join the gang and so far they proved to be alright."

I heard someone cleaning her throat before I turned to Freya. "It's good you already found a friend Kisara but we have to start your initiation."

"Of course", I nodded, "what I have to do?"

At this she motioned for a table at the side and took off the cloth hiding it's contents. A veritable arsenal of weapons was laying on it, from bladed weapons to non-lethal options like a section staff and a tonfa. "Choose a weapon from this stand then we will test your aptitude with it. Of course if you don't want any weapon you are free fight unarmed, but you will be a disadvantage."

I looked at the weapons and caught a kama in my hands. Its blade glimmered in my hands and when I passed a finger on it I could feel it was sharp. "Are you really telling me we are going to fight with live steel as an initiation for the gang?"

Freya nodded. "The best way to learn how to properly use and respect weapons is to use them in full. Besides, a wooden weapon balance is different from a real one."

Tell me about it. We had bough a couple of real throwing knifes to try our throwing technique, and it did fly better than the kitchen knifes we are buying in bulk under henge, but since we still didn't found a proper supplier of shinobi weapons we had to make do with inferior equipment. If I could choose between the real deal and an inferior copy I would get the real one ten times out of ten. Still those girls looked pretty damn hardcore to play with live steel right away. Even Tobio started out with dulled practice knifes while teaching me the throwing forms and in armed taijutsu combat.

Taking another look at the table I found a tanto, more like a knife really, but it had a much better grip than the larger kitchen knifes I occasionally use for melee and it had a more natural feel on my hand. "Can I keep this one after the initiation?"

"If you pass you can keep the weapons you choose for yourself. Call it a gift if you like."

Neat. I took the blade in my hand and did a few practice swings, making sure not to show too much before nodding. "Alright, when do we start?"

"Right now", she said and some other girls came from around the room with their own weapons. I moved to the center of the room with the other room occupants giving us some more space. They each had their own weapon, one girl had a naginata, another had a kusarigama, another hand a pair of sais, another had a pair of tonfas and another had a spear. Idly I wondered if the girls with a pair of weapons knew how hard it was to use them instead of a single one and the potential limitations they might present, but I held my piece.

Taking the blade in a reverse grip I set into my taijutsu stance in the middle of the group before nodding. Taking that as a signal the one in front of me, the naginata girl, trust forwards her weapon which I parried with my own before grabbing at it's shaft and kicking at her hand, loosening it's grip before twisting it away from her hands. I twirled it quickly before poking at her with the butt end of the shaft. "Bam, you're dead." I said before throwing the Naginata back to Freya who caught it surprised by my demonstration.

The whole deal didn't take more than four seconds, which stunned the other girls into inaction for a moment before I continued with my initiation without a care for their confusion. The next one on my target was the one behind me, the spear girl which had her weapon pointed slight downwards which allowed me to hit it's blade with enough force for it to hit the ground where I stepped into the shaft and entered into her guard, disarming her weapon before making fake motion to slash her throat. "You're dead".

With two disabled the rest of the group seemed to get their shit together and started to act, and their team work wasn't half bad for amateurs but it probably relied on the other two members to be effective. The girl with the Kusarigama threw her chain and I caught it with my free hand before dashing towards her but I was intercepted by the sai girl, of course that wasn't much of a surprise since she was the closest to me and I used the chain to block and circle her arms, making a living shield in the process I lightly kicked into the girl before once more 'slashing' at her throat.

The girl with a tonfa was the easiest so far since I didn't had to bother with being cut down, so I just kicked her on the legs and then on her stomach before once more 'killing' my target. Now I had kusarigama girl half tangled with sai girl, and with a quick run did a leg sweep on the duo and once they landed on the ground I 'stabbed' at them, ending the initiation.

I'd like to say I didn't use chakra for it since they were amateurs with no real life experience, but that would be lying. While I was certain that my overall skill was greater than theirs I used chakra to speed myself up just a tiny bit to catch the two girls with polearms off guard. I am confident in my skills but I didn't want this to drag out more than necessary, and this will clearly allow me to climb up in the ranks quickly since my credentials were established.

I slowly stood up and looked at Freya, who was starting at me surprised at how I dealt with her girls, before she recomposed herself and started clapping her hands. Soon the other girls not fighting joined and even the defeated girls did the same, if a bit more reluctantly.

"Well done Kisara. You did well against those initiates and perhaps you will become the first to enter my elite group, the Valkyries. Though I must comment that you didn't used your weapon much."

"There wasn't much to use it for", I said in as level tone as possible, "I'm more comfortable with unarmed attacks and I used the knife to 'finish' my opponents quickly instead. It was a good thing they were reasonable."

Freya had an appreciating look on her before continuing. "They had all passed the same trials, and you only had to disarm one of them, but clearly you are an experienced fighter. Can you tell me how you achieved this degree of proficiency?"

"I train by myself?" I shrugged, not really wanting to come up with an elaborate lie. They wouldn't believe anyway. "I had a lot of free time after I left the taekwondo dojo I frequented and I took that time to hone my skills and instincts. I also entered into a couple of fights, even some against armed people so I knew what I was doing."

She nodded, and dismissed everyone. Only me and Shiratori remained on the room.

"That was awesome Kisara! I never knew you could do all that! But tell me the truth, there's more to it than what you told Freya, didn't you?"

I raised an eyebrow at her, not sure what she was going with this. I certainly wasn't going to admit anything incriminating to her, friend or not.

"You keep training with that boy, Fujimura Tobio, isn't you? Back in the dojo you two were basically glued to your hips together." At this Shiratori gave me a mischievous smile. "Got any closer to your boy~friend?"

My face heated up and I sputtered a reply. "He's not my boyfriend! He's just my... friend."

Even after all those years I couldn't call him 'brother', even if my parents are his guardians and we sleep on the same room. When that thought came up my face heated up even more as I remembered that I was sharing a room with a teenager boy that wasn't blood related.

No! Bad Kisara! No impure thoughts about your best friend!

Besides he doesn't seen to think of me that way...

"Hmm hum", she said still with that teasing smile on her face, "well good luck with that Kisara, and welcome to Ragnarok."

I nodded, not really trusting my words before I tried to sober it up.

The easier part is done. Now, to raise in ranks and find out more about what this gang is all about. Tobio said he had a bad feeling about this gang, and now that I saw what their initiation looked like I had to agree that something fishy was going on.

Hopefully nothing more would blindside us.


	7. Chapter 7

_One thousand (and change) views. Hopefully I can get to 10k before next christmas year._

~~~~OOO~~~~

The initial frenzy of growth I had the previous years started to slow as I got near my previous level of skill before I died. I was at best average back then, and being reincarnated didn't give me any sudden insights or abilities beyond what I had. It only helped me speed up my development, help polish around the edges even without a sensei to teach me and to both directly and indirectly boost my chakra reserves. By living my life twice I have twice the amount of spiritual energy and by diligently training my body since an early age my chakra reserves had already surpassed my previous life, with a chakra control to match.

The real problem now is to find ways for my training to keep paying off in this critical stage of development. I had already greatly enhanced my physical training, going from the more standard one hundred repetitions to the more strenuous five hundred, but without a way to find more serviceable heavy weights or the chakra weight seals I will soon hit my plateau there soon. At least school gave me plenty of opportunities to train my mind since it forced me to learn much more information and knowledge than the academy did.

Speaking of school I shifted my focus on D-ranks. While I keep doing the occasional chore on the neighborhood to slowly shift the friendships more towards myself than to Kisara's parents, most of my time doing D-ranks were spent on school either doing chores or helping the clubs. This gave me a little reputation as The Janitor and The Helper, as I helped cleaning and fixing things when my skills where sufficient for the task or giving an extra hand during special events for the clubs. I couldn't exactly ask for money, but the good will, increased reputation and gratitude from both students and faculty allowed me to expand my contact network which was my real purpose in doing those things.

It kind of made me feel like a jerk in using them like that, giving a false front of friendliness when I'm not nearly that much altruistic, but needs must and I rather use my time efficiently when not training. Besides it's not like I didn't had friends of my own age, far from it. After all it's easier to empathize with teenagers than with little kids so my attempts at friendship were more genuine.

Let's take for example the two guys I'm talking about right now. One Ikki Takeda and one Kozo Ukita. While both of them came from different schools each I meet them during small tournaments when I aided the Boxing club and the Judo club at my school.

Surprisingly I didn't win the Boxing tournament due to the point system and the way the rules were structured, with Takeda getting the first place. When I went to compliment him on his victory he admitted he only won due to experience in the sport and by abusing the rules, which I told him it was fine and as good a tactic as any, after all as a ninja I'm taught to use whatever means necessary to complete a mission. When he learned I was basically an amateur on this sport he quickly became interested in me and my abilities, and we quickly hit it off with me appreciating his good humor and cheer while he liked my calm and mature demeanor. Or so I like to think.

The same happened with Ukita for the most part, except this time I fared a little better on the team fighting matches we had in the tournament, with me being the acting Captain and last line of defense while the rest of the team fought against the opposing teams. This time I didn't had to fight much, the level of our own team being quite high and once more with me being there only to fill in for the captain who was sick at the time. I only had to fight once and managed to easily win against my opponent. Once more I meet with Ukita after the tournament, but this time it was because I overheard him talking about his pet cats and it got me curious about it.

"... and then my friend ATE the shrimp!" Takeda finished his tale and I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it and how he managed to con his friend in doing something like that.

Ukita for his part was grinning while shaking his head at the antics of our mutual friend. "You're incorrigible, you know that?"

"Thank you, thank you very much", he said in broken english while imitating a singer I forgot his name. "What about you Tobio, any funny stories?"

"Well", I started before trying to remember something amusing enough and innocent enough before on settling on something I witnessed a long time ago, "there is this kid I heard about from a friend, his name is Naruto and..."

~~O~~

In one particular night where I didn't had any missions and was just watching a movie and relaxing for once the phone on Kisara's house rang. There was nobody else in the house with Kisara's parents going to a private dinner together (and possibly more later) and Kisara herself was at Ragnarok headquarters doing who knows what, so I picked up the phone.

"Hello? Who's speaking?"

"Tobio? Is that you? Man, I'm sorry to ask you this, but can you give me a hand? My friend got into trouble and I want to help him but I think I'm going to bite more than I can chew. I also called for Ukita as a backup but I would really feel better if you could help me."

"Sure, no problem Takeda, where are you now?"

"Thanks man! I owe you one! I'm going to give you the address, please be there as soon as you can. Bye!"

I memorized the address and after changing out of my pajamas I took to the roofs to get there as fast as I could. By the background sound he had probably clled from a public phone so he was probably already close to whatever it is that he had to save his friend for. With a few well placed shunshin I manage to cover a lot of ground and soon I managed to find the place he told me.

On the rooftop I could see Takeda on the ground while a group of punks had him pinned on the ground. Subtly dropping from it I channeled my chakra to quickly reach them in an instant, with me grabbing the arm of one of the punks just as he was about to slam a rock on Takeda's left hand. "What do you fuckers think you're doing?" I said in a cold voice.

"What?" One of them said, "where did you come from?"

"None of your fucking business. I'm going to warn you only once: turn around and go home unless you want to get injured."

"Yeah? Well, fuck you!" One of them had a baseball bat and swung at my head, which I caught the weapon in my hand and I had to fight down the urge to bend it under my grip. At this moment Ukita appeared from one of the corners and saw us.

"Get away from my friends you bastards!"

All hell broke lose, with the hardest part of the fight being me trying not to break up their bones into fine powder and not display an amount of skill far to greater than what I showed during the tournaments. I think I succeeded since neither Takeda or Ukita commented on my takedown of the punks, then again there weren't many of them in the first place so that's to be expected.

As I had knocked down most of them Takeda asked me to spare one of them who I only lightly hit on the guts to prevent his escape, and once the other punks managed to drag themselves out of our sight all three of us circled the spared punk as Takeda took the lead.

"Why Daichi, why did you do this?" Takeda's voice was calm but it was laced with doubt and hurt. "Did they force you to do it? Did they had some blackmail on you? Please tell me what's going on."

The guy in front of us didn't looked very repentant of whatever he did, though by the phrasing of Takede it wasn't hard to figure it out. He stayed silent for a while and I 'helped' him loosen his lips a little by leaking some directed killing intent towards him and he started to sweat, looking frantically for the source of his uneasiness. Practicing on all those birds really paid off.

"Damn it", he finally broke, "why did you guys appear? And you!" He said while pointing at Takeda in a furious visage, "why didn't you agree with the guys demands? You knew they would beat you up and even prevent you from ever reaching professional level! If only you didn't act so tough you could have avoided all this!"

"That doesn't explain why you did this Daichi", Takeda replied in a sad tone, "please tell me this wasn't your idea."

"Well, what if it was, huh?" He almost spat at Takeda's face. "Without you in the next tournament I could win without problems and quickstart my career! You're always there, rubbing in my face your genius while saying pointless things like 'do your best' or 'keep trying and you will achieve your dream', so much bullshit! What do you know about effort? What do you know about dreams? A prodigy like you would never understand someone who's only average like me who had to train extra hard to reach where I am now."

Somehow that speech pissed me off. What did HE knew about being average and having to play catch up? While I wasn't naive enough to believe everyone was created equal in terms of skills and aptitude, that didn't meant you didn't had to do your all in order to improve, to progress, to become stronger. I learned that lesson too late and I ended up dead for heaven's sake! And yet he apparently betrayed his friend out of jealously?

If he was a Konoha ninja he would have been dead twice over, such traitorous scum being shown no mercy. To betray one's comrade like that is one of the worst possible crimes you could commit.

I must stated to leak some unfocused killing intent because everyone else started to get nervous and grasp for air before I took a deep breath and clamped it down. They all felt relieved by that but they looked on my general direction, trying to figure out what happened. Hopefully they wouldn't associate me with the oppressive feeling they felt.

"Anyway", finally said Ukita trying to shake off the fear, "to put it simply you're a traitorous coward who didn't even had the guts to backstab your friend yourself and had to rely on a group of thugs", he said with contempt in his voice, "you disgust me and I can't believe Takeda was ever a friend with you."

I couldn't trust my words so I just glared at him while keeping my killing intent in check.

Takeda just took a deep breath before looking at Daichi. "Just... go. I don't... just... go."

"What?" Yelled Ukita, "are we going to let his guy get off so easily?"

Takeda eyes were hard while he nodded, but I could see clear as a day that he was trying to contain his emotions in check. Daichi took that as his clue to run, and soon he was out of sight. As he finally left us Takeda hit the nearby wall with great strength, once, twice, before I caught his fist.

"Takeda..."

In a sense I was fortunate since I never felt this kind of betrayal before. To have someone you trusted to betray you like this, it must be devastating. Once more I remembered Uchiha Sasuke, and I started to really understand why he was such an asshole, after all his whole family was killed by one of his own family member, his brother no less. The betrayal he felt must have been immense.

Ukita didn't knew what to do so he just gave his friend an one armed hug, and I did the same on his other side.

If I heard any untoward sounds coming from my friend, I didn't commented.

We stayed like that for a few moments before we all recomposed ourselves. "So what now?" Ukita asked to his friend, "you can't possibly let him get away with it."

"I will tell the coach, if it's me who tells him he will believe me. Damn it! We were supposed to become pros together!"

"Sometimes life throws a wrench in our plans", I told him already with experience on that, both on missions gone awry and with the fact that I died before I could fully get my act together back in the Elemental Nations, "we have to learn from that and adapt to the new situation, no matter how painful it might be. It's a good thing we don't have to do that alone."

"Heh, you almost sound like an old man Tobio", Takeda said with a mirthless chuckle, "but thank you. From helping me and just being there."

"Hey, what friends are for, right? Besides, Ukita helped too you know. Even if it was a tiny little bit."

"Hey!"

"Too true, even if his contribution was microscopic it's the thought that counts right?"

"That's it! You two are going down!"

I didn't made much effort to avoid the subsequent rough up, and I could feel that Takeda's spirits had risen up from our little play.

I also pondered if those two would be good additions to the clan, but quickly dismissed those thoughts. They were happy being civilians, and even if they somehow acquired the same degree of proficiency and power Jagi did, the shinobi life wasn't for everyone.

I just hoped that if they ever found out the truth about me they wouldn't feel betrayed by the reveal.


	8. Chapter 8

I was fifteen and Kisara was sixteen, and we were separated from school once more as she went to the Koryu High School across the river. She had been in Ragnarok for nearly a year and her mission was going smoothly.

Apparently the gang started out more as some kind of underground fighting club where delinquents could go to relieve some stress by beating the shit out of each other, but as time passed things started to change and turn to more classical direction a gang does: vandalism, protection rackets, territory disputes, petty bullying and even drug trade on the side. All of this started slowly, as the previous members would slowly get used to more and more morally objectionable acts, new recruits who had no problem with those acts and as smaller gangs were slowly assimilated by Ragnarok.

Most of this new direction of the gang, from a mostly 'honorable gathering of fighters' into a common gang was because of a recent member of Ragnarok, the ever illusive Loki, or Kyoichi Takame as we soon learned. A very smart and clever individual, he had a good head on his shoulders when it came to winning fightings but he relied too much on cheap tricks to win instead of directly honing his abilities.

You might be wondering why a ninja like me would object to using cheap tricks to win, but the truth of the matter is, at some point the difference in power is so great that no amount of strategy and tactics can bridge that difference in power. I had to learn that lesson twice, first when I failed my first jonin test, and then later during the Pain invasion. While fear of overwhelming power is no excuse not to use tactics as much as you could while fighting, it also meant that you need to have a minimum necessary amount of power in order to fight powerful opponents.

As the poem from the chunin exams said, 'if you lack earth run the fields and seek strength, if you lack heaven prepare yourself and seek wisdom', or something like that.

Back on topic though, everything wasn't merely Loki's fault since he's only responsible for helping direct it and manage the gang activities. The leader of the group, Odin or Asamiya Ryuto, either didn't cared for the most part or condoned those activities which as a leader meant he was also to blame for this direction the gang was going. In fact he seemed to be encouraging some of the practices, like the aggressive territory expansion and even the petty bullying, spouting some nonsense about strength of whatever.

They had recently expanded into another gang territory, the Snake gang, where their former leader joined Ragnorok as the newest Second Fist and together Odin, Freya and the newly christened Berserker they officially ran the gang.

There were rumors about an unknown backer for the gang, someone simply called Sage Fist that supposedly would one day give training to the growing number of Fists in their little organization. Except until now only Odin had been trained by this elusive martial arts master.

Other than that Kisara infiltration mission where going well enough, with her making her own contacts and loyal followers who were awed of her prowess and talent, alongside her uncharacteristic kindness and softness that hid a sharp blade under this perceived 'weakness'. In fact with the new recruitment of Fists into their gang Freya was thinking on initiating Kisara into the elite group herself, but for now they wanted to see her leadership abilities. With their blessing Kisara took her own group of subordinates and loyal followers with herself and was tasked with 'conquering her school'.

Basically what happened in other schools of the region which Ragnaork had a member, in order to advance in rank they had to be considered the leader of the delinquents in the school, effectively ruling them. The preffered method was of course to beat all other delinquents into submission, but in schools where delinquency wasn't a real problem they were supposed to demonstrate their superiority and the strength of Ragnarok. That meant bullying and making yourself a nuisance to the other students and the faculty, 'ruling' by fear the school.

I should also note that even Freya, who were the least trigger happy of the currently assembled Fists, also didn't voiced much more than token objections to this system when Kisara asked around.

Looks like Ragnarok was starting to outlast my patience.

Still there was something else that was rubbing me the wrong way in all this. Other than the identity of the Sage Fist, another piece of hard won information was the fact that the whole gang was being created in order to combat another one from a different city. Now, while Ragnarok wasn't the largest gang in numbers, even with the current recruitment craze and the assimilation of Snake and other lesser gangs, Ragnarok certainly had the highest rate of more elite fighters, those of 'commander' rank or higher not counting the special divisions and the deadly Fists themselves. I wonder what kind of opposition Ragnarok expects from this unknown gang? Thugs armed with guns? I would understand that if we were on the United States but here in Japan it was a bitch to get hands into firearms even on the underground, only larger organizations like the Yakuza being able to field those things in relevant numbers.

What would make Ragnarok so desperate to grow in numbers and quality?

Still, there was one more notable thing that happened this year.

By now I had stopped doing D-ranks, even the school related ones, to focus on training and C-rank mission around the nearby region, both solo and with Kisara as my partner, when Kisara finally asked me when she would do a solo mission.

To be frank the proper answer to that would be 'when you make it elite chunin', but that would make me a massive hypocrite since I had been doing solo C-ranks for a while now and I had only JUST started to squirt on the edges of that classification, if only in sheer experience if you add my previous life into equation. From what I gathered from past experiences she was more than ready to do the kind of missions I was doing by now.

Still, I worried, and went through the backlog of possible missions to look for the perfect one for her. Safe enough she could handle herself if things went awry, but not so easy as to both insult and waste her abilities.

Ah! I had the perfect mission that she could do, and with the money we had we had brought a cellphone to use strictly for mission purposes.

This should do nicely, now all I had to do is to revise the information on the mission, get some more extra intel and handle it to her.

... is this how Hokage-sama felt? Sending his ninja to missions, knowing that even if the mission was supposedly safe, the shinobi could theoretically handle it, there was always, always that small chance that everything would go horribly wrong and you had effectively sent your men and women to their deaths?

Frankly, that's not a position I would want for myself, but I suppose that's something I will have to get used soon. Even if I never was in that position in my former life, as a chunin I would have to eventually make similar calls for the sake of the mission, my feelings on the matter be damned.

Once more the 'kill your emotions' bit started to make more sense, but I knew she isn't weak so I had to have faith in her skills and courage.

Hopefully I won't regret it later.


	9. Chapter 9

**Kisara POV**

With another jump I landed from the roof and started walking towards the place where my next client was located. My mission was to be one of the bodyguards of a foreign crime boss in another city, a member of an Italian mafia called 'Familia' that developed in a foreigner district in said city.

Once arriving at the location I identified myself to the guards. "I am Genin Neko and came here to act as a bodyguard to your boss."

The two suits looked at me for an instant and I thought they would object, before the one on the left nodded and let me in. As he showed me the place I remembered the conversation I had with Tobio.

As usual in this kind of bodyguard mission I would need to take the money after the mission completion, and in case the mission was a failure I would not go after however killed my employer in retaliation, but instead head back home without the money. If a fight break out I had to prioritize the safety of my charge, unless somehow defeating my opposition would be more beneficial to the overall mission.

Since it was a solo mission, by default I would be alone. While I had a cellphone with me to contact Tobio, unless something goes horrendously wrong I'm on my own, and merely getting harder than expected opposition wasn't considered bad enough to call him in. It was really touching how he struggled with this decision and how he wanted to accompany me, but he knew I need to prove myself capable to perform those higher risk missions on my own. If anything, Tobio wasn't one to coddle me, never was and probably never will be.

As for what he would be doing himself he had some paperwork to shift through, reviewing the after action reports he insisted both of us to write even for simple things like D-ranks, citing it's important to have a good database of those things when we would one day expand ourselves. Thank the heaves I stopped doing D-ranks when I started my infiltration mission on Ragnarok.

"Right this way", the suit entered the room and I could see there were a couple of other suits inside with him. They probable didn't trust me to be on the same room as him without some kind of insurance. I let then keep that illusion since there was no reason for me to antagonize them.

"So you're the one to protect me", said the man in front of me. I had to admit he was a bit handsome, with short brown combed hair, a pair of designer glasses framing his face and almost black eyes. He had a lean build and was dressed in an immaculate gray suit and wearing a brown tie, with matched belt and shoes to complete his outfit. "I wasn't expecting a child."

I bowed in respect to him as I ignored his remark. "I assure you my reputation wasn't exaggerated and I will protect you with my life."

He looked at me impassively before approaching me but still at a respectable distance, circling me and measuring me up. "I doubt less your ability to protect me and rather your willingness to do so. What prevents you from assassinating me later? Or what guarantees I have that you weren't hired by somebody else to kill me when my guard was down?"

"It's bad business to protect and then kill someone at a later date. It gives the impression that we have no integrity and are willing to sell out our clients at the drop of the hat, which once more is simply bad business. Unless you become such a public enemy that associating ourselves with you will be bad for our reputation, you have nothing to fear to us." Which basically means that if he somehow becomes too evil for us all bets are off, standard Konoha practice for clients outside the nobility of Hi no Kuni.

"As for guarantees that I'm not going to kill you now..."

Suddenly I disappeared and I entered inside the guard of the two bodyguard in front of my future client, my gifted knife resting on his throat. He widened his eyes, but before he could issue any orders or the other suits could even move I had already came back to my previous position as if nothing had happened.

"... if I wanted you dead there's nothing you could have done to stop me."

"You bitch!" Said one of the suits, "I'm going to-"

"Stop", my would be client said to his goon making him stare at his employer, "I see your point Neko. Though if I knew I was hiring someone from Yami earlier I wouldn't have doubted you."

"I'm not from Yami", I told him which surprised the man, "we're an independent group that is working in this area and hopefully plans to expand in the future."

"I see. I'm glad honestly since I rather not associate myself with them more than strictly necessary, Yami have a very intimidating reputation in the underworld even if their mission success rate is practically impeccable."

"Perhaps one day I will want to meet with those from Yami", I supplied, honestly curious about them.

"No, you do not", was the blunt reply from my client. "Pray that you never have to deal with them, least of all as opponents."

~~O~~

The mission started once we left the building towards the office where he will meet with other mafia and underworld crime bosses of various factions. There they will discuss whatever and afterwards we will take the car back to his house, where I will be officially discharged with my payment. They admitted they asked for an outsider to help with protection due to our skills, fearing that grunts with guns wouldn't be enough if one of the factions or a third party decided to go for the kill.

Inside the office only two bodyguards of each boss could enter, and fortunately the place wasn't directly in front of large windows where snipers could take anybody out. The meeting itself went smoothly, with pleasantries being exchanged and politeness being the rule of the day.

I wasn't fooled even for a second.

After the long meeting we went to the parking lot to head back home, when things started going wrong.

My client, Enrico D' Ambrosio, lived on the countryside so we took the highway to get there. After ten minutes we heard an helicopter on the skies, but at the time other than being mildly apprehensive we did nothing but keep on the road for a while. It was when we saw the blockade on the road that we knew things had gone down to hell.

Of course to make things worse, the road had been littered with caltrops the same color as the darkened road the driver couldn't spot and the car swerved and twirled through the road. Once we stopped we saw the a small group of armed thugs coming towards our cars. We were four cars in total with Enrico's car in the middle, but even so we were still caught in the trap.

"The car is bullet proof, right?" I asked the driver and he nodded. "Wait here."

I left the car alongside the other suits in our side, and all hell broke lose.

I dashed at the group in front of us and unleashed my best attacks, breaking their jaws and knocking them out one by one in an almost mechanical fashion when I dodged to the side, almost getting shot behind me. I threw a knife at his arm, disabling him before another suit on the other side shot me. He only missed because his companion was right in front of me and he didn't want to kill his partner, when a third and a fourth suit pulled their guns towards me in different positions of the battlefield, and almost in reflex I drew my knifes and threw at both of them simultaneously.

One of them had the knife firmly lodged in their eye, with the other having hit squarely in the forehead.

Soon I had exhausted all my supply of throw knifes for this mission, having knocked out with critical damage the vast majority of my enemies, and the others...

Some of them were down by the shots from the suits on my side, having taken the bullet on their center of mass and going into shock, while others would eventually die out from blood loss.

However at least five of them had knives either firmly slammed into their skull, neck or chest and I confirmed their deaths just as I went to retrieve my weapons. Not only that but a few of the suits I had 'knocked out' actually had their necks snapped and had already stopped breathing.

I had killed them.

I had killed those people.

With my own hands. With my own weapons.

I, I didn't want to! I wasn't ready yet! But my body acted in auto pilot and targeted their vitals just as I had trained before, my aim impeccable and flying true. My hits were strong and precise, just like in training, but differently from Tobio they couldn't take the same level of impacts.

My breathing started to get labored and my heartbeat spiked, and suddenly I was feeling so sick that-

Something landed on the ground, a man jumped from the helicopter that had been following us. It quickly went after the other suits and in an instant it killed two of the closest. He was about to go to the next when I stopped him with a kick to his face that he easily blocked.

"So you're going to defend those peons? Don't you want us to clean all distractions from our glorious battle?"

I just answered him with another attack he dodged this time and with a somersault landed several meters away from me.

Looks like I don't have the time to freak out yet. I still have a job to do.


	10. Chapter 10

**Kisara POV**

The other suits had their guns trailed at him, and while I would want to have the fire support while fighting this man there's always the risk of friendly fire. "Protect the VIP and leave this guy to me." I said in voice loud and clear enough everyone would listen.

They did the smart thin and all clustered around the car of my client, not really risking him coming out of the car even for a single instant. Though even if they were willing to go with the tires busted the blockade had huge concrete slabs on the road preventing us to get through, and the road itself was on a bridge so we couldn't really go around the road.

Coming back to my more immediate concern, the man in front of me was tall but lean, though his muscles were visible behind his form fitting leather clothes. He was wearing all black without any skin visible other than his neck and head, and I couldn't dismiss the possibility for him to be wearing some kind of armor under all that leather, perhaps a chain shirt to protect against stabbing and cutting? He had two piercings on his eyes in the shape of crosses and he wasn't carrying any visible weapons.

No scratch that, his hands had black steel plates to enhance the damage and the same was for his feet and knees, with steel plated boots and knee guards.

"My name is Samael Rodrigo", he said with a small bow, "may I have the name of the one I'm about to kill?"

His eyes had a clear maniac glint to it while sporting what could be simply called a 'shit eating grin', his longer hair made into a high ponytail and his face sporting no marks, showing clearly foreign features.

"You can call me Neko, shinobi of genin rank", I fully introduced myself mostly to stall for time and try to observe him a bit more while trying to come up with a plan. As far as I'm aware he's faster than a normal civilian by a wide margin, but I'm not sure if it is experience, raw speed or me still being out of it that allowed him to defend against my attacks earlier. Either option is a bad one in this situation.

"Oh ho, a ninja eh? Though that's clearly evident by your clothing", he said with a leer, "say, how about we kill everyone here and get a few drinks? My threat."

I narrowed my eyes at him, which he caught on even from this distance and overall darkness of the place. Somehow his grin widened even more. "No? Well, can't fault a man for trying."

He set himself into a stance, meaning violence would soon follow and I reinforced my body with chakra as much as I could. The tricky part was to do so without wasting chakra and in the correct way otherwise it would be completely ineffectual. I had focused my training in chakra reinforcement instead of splitting my attention with Ninjutsu and Genjutsu like Tobio did, and while I could do both to acceptable degree for my skill level according to Tobio I was more of a Taijutsu specialist of the pair against the generalist approach my partner had.

It will be put to test if my decision would pay off in the end.

"Heh, hope you can be a better match than the previous chick I had to deal with. Now", he said at least settling himself in a fighting stance. "Let's Dance!"

Just as he finished saying that I dashed towards him, pumping as much chakra as I could on my legs before flipping in the air and doing an axe kick on his head. He took a step back to dodge, my feet planting violently in the ground and cracking the pavement with a small crater.

"Hoh, looks like you have a bit of bite on you", he said as he dodged another attack of mine, this one getting much closer to his face while I twist and turn my body to attack his own body. At the last instant he blocks the attack, once more retreating a couple of paces from me. "Of course, so do I!"

I had recomposed myself when he came to me with a comparable speed, perhaps even faster than me. His punch soared through the side of my head as I dodged by a hair breath and he sent another and another and another attack I barely dodged. I had lost the initiative and I was ready to counter him when suddenly I felt something in my mid section, making me lose all the air in lungs. "GAAAHHH... HAH!"

"You need to be careful honey", he said with that flirty tone of voice of his, "there's more to combat than punching you know?"

I quickly recomposed myself, already having experience in that due to the intense spars I had with Tobio, but I never felt an attack so strong before. Still, I managed to counter him while he was talking with a chakra enhanced fist. The same principle as when you fail the Chakra Climbing Exercise when putting too much chakra on your feet, making the bark under to break, and if done while punching or kicking it would improve the damage of the attack. The principle of high level taijutsu combat.

I also managed to hit him on the face, whipping that damn smirk off his face, but sadly I didn't dealt nearly as much damage as I could due to my lackluster attack. Still I knew he felt the attack meaning this wasn't a hopeless situation.

Just a very difficult one.

He massaged his jaw for an instant as he took some more distance and I used the opportunity to catch my breath. "You have a mean left, you know that? But then, if you didn't this wouldn't be nearly as fun."

Combat resumed with me charging at him, once more sending him a flurry of punches and kicks, slowly getting used to his rhythm in order to land more than one or two occasional blows. He didn't take my attacks quietly though, and gave back as much as I did, but we were in a sort of stalemate for a couple of minutes when I finally realized something.

I was getting tired faster than he. In fact, he didn't seen to be tired at all. Still I keep fighting as much as I could, after all training with Tobio gave me a lot of stamina and a rather large chakra reserve if you consider that until I was eight I had no chakra at all and had to build my reserves late in life. That didn't change the fact that I couldn't keep doing this forever, I had to think of something to break this stalemate before he killed me.

*BANG*

We turned to the suit who shoot at us, missing both of us entirely. "Guess we need to deal with some pests first."

In an instant he disappeared from my sight and was in front of the offending suit, tripping him into the ground before being ready to crush the suit's head beneath his foot. With a quick application of chakra I performed a shunshin, a jutsu with both inside and outside combat applications that I still don't have mastery over it, but it was enough to save the life of that suit by countering the grinning asshole with a kick to the back of his head, sending him tumbling a couple of meters away.

Deppresingly it was also my best attack on him so far. It was sad reality that I had to resort to a sucker punch to... hit... him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

You're a NINJA! Of course sucker punching him is alright! What have I been thinking? This isn't a spar, this is a life or death battle against a superior opponent! If I lose I will DIE, and Tobio isn't here to save my ass!

I knew why my mind had went away from the realities of battle: I was still reeling from the shock of killing my opponents earlier. Well, if i wanted to survive long enough to regret my actions I had do my all.

With that in mind I went through everything I had in order to win this fight. Immediately I discarded my knives since he would probably dodge them all, and I didn't had enough of them for more than a single bout of distraction. I had a smoke bomb but at this time it won't help nearly as much since he's too fast for me to regroup somewhere and I still had to protect the client. Then it clicked, and I remembered that Tobio had finally cracked how to make higher grade explosive tags, with enough power to blast down a three trunk into pieces. I can work with that.

I took advantage of my opponent taking his sweet time rising up to set up my next attack carefully. "Heh, that was a good one, but enough with playing. I have a job to do after a-"

I interrupted him once I was ready, and with another shunshin I reappeared right in front of him. His widened eyes was the only indication that I had caught him by surprise and I sent a kick towards him in a way I knew he would dodge backwards just like he did time and time again, but this time I followed by one of my knifes with the explosive tag attached into it. He only had an instant to see the burning piece of paper on the knife before it automatically exploded near him.

He used all his speed to escape from the blast, but even then he had been singed from the impact. I had also predicted the direction which he would escape and followed him with another shunshin, and as I grabbed on his leg to deliver a powerful kick at his jaw I saw him backflip as if nothing had happened.

"Tsk, using explosives now? Where are your honor as a martial artist?" Even as he said that you doubt he believed in the nonsense he was spewing.

With my tanto in hand I looked at him deep in the eye, and for a moment I understood the appeal in using genjutsu, before I brought my hands into a familiar handseal. "Katsu!"

The explosive tag I had placed on the grinning fucker blew up, and I heard a pained yell from him just as he was blew away from the blast, his leg looping off from his body, and yet he was still conscious, a testament to the toughness of the people native to my world and whatever the hell they do to match chakra users. With another shunshin I charged directly to where he had rolled back, and with a single chakra enhanced trust I put my tanto through his chest, breaking his sternum and piercing his heart. He seemed to be surprised for a moment before I took off the blade and once more with a chakra enhanced slash I looped off his head, killing him once and for all.

The lifeless body fell on the ground, and I took a deep breath before falling on my knees, tired from the fight and the expenditure of chakra I had.

I need to train more to avoid getting so tired next time. But I won. I survived and the client is still alive, and from the looks of it the suits don't want to suddenly betray me.

All in all it was a success, regardless of the circumstances of what happened today. Now I only have to deal with the clean up, get my money and limp back home.


	11. Chapter 11

**Kisara POV**

I took a scroll from my equipment pouch and placed it on the ground, taking the body, head and looped off leg from Samael in order to seal it for later study, even if currently we lacked the means to properly analyze it but Tobio asked the bodies whenever it was possible for future reference if nothing else.

After collecting all weapons and putting those half-dead out of their misery we finally cleaned up the road and unblocked the bridge so we could go. A few cars were a bit packed, but as the primary bodyguard of Enrico I had some privileges.

Soon we had arrived at his house with no further problems.

"Your money will arrive shortly", said one of the suits as we entered the residence of Enrico, which ironically enough looked like a classical japanese home complete with garden and matching architecture. As I followed Enrico something opened the screen door to his house and quickly ran towards him.

"DADDY~!" Said the little boy as he came running towards Enrico, jumping on his waist as he got close and almost knocking the air from him.

"Fernando, what I have told you about going to bed early?" Said Enrico in a stern, if warn voice.

"But but you promised to come home before I went to bed! You promised!"

"Hikaru, please let your father come inside the house first", said another voice, and from inside the house came a woman around her thirties wearing a light kimono. "Welcome home dear."

Enrico comes to her side with his son on his arms, receiving a peck on his cheek before handing the kid to her. "I will be back shortly", he said while the woman turns to me and while still with her child in hands she gives me a bow of gratitude.

A few minutes later Enrico comes with my money, and once I verify that everything is in order I bow at him. "Everything is in order", I said with the suitcase in hands, "hopefully we can do business again."

He just grunts noncommittally and I take it as the dismissal it is, but I had to ask. "I didn't knew you had a family."

"I tend to keep my family away from my affairs, even if I know that in the future my son will either join a world I don't want him to be part of, or he will revile me for my choices."

"Then why do you do it?"

He looked at me deep in the eyes, struggling with his answer before sighing. "I did what I had to do in order to survive, and I had a duty to my community when I inherited my position from my father. Now I make sure to protect my own people even if I will be reviled by it."

I didn't knew how to respond, so I simply nodded in acceptance and turned back, ready to go home.

It has been a long night.

~~O~~

"Welcome home Kisara." Tobio answered the door with clear relief in his eyes. I tried to smile at him but somehow I felt it was too brittle, too fake. He probably caught on that already, being better at reading people than me by a wide margin. All those D-ranks had to pay off somehow. "Come in, I will make some tea and you can tell me about your mission."

As we sat at the kitchen table waiting for the water to boil I couldn't look at him in the eye. He patiently waited for me to talk, but it was as if the words had escaped from me. I could feel the eyes of Tobio on me, waiting for me to open up to him.

Heavens, why it is so difficult? It's not like he didn't go through the same thing as me back into his first life. I mean, it's not like he's a complete psychopath that didn't felt anything the first time he killed, right? Damn it, now I'm even doubting my best friend!

The kettle started to whistle and Tobio stood up to make the tea.

"Tobio", I started, my chest tight with anxiety, "what happened during your first time?"

He didn't answer for a moment, busy with the tea before he turned with the streaming cups for us. I gladly took the drink and started sipping it. We stayed silent for a few seconds before he answered.

"The first time I killed", he said already figuring out what I meant, "it was during a C-rank mission turned B-rank. We were supposed to fight a couple of bandits to fend off a caravan, but due to reasons that aren't important right now we had to face off against chunin ninja. At the time we were all genin and we had to face the opposition as a team. While our jonin sensei took care of the majority of chunin we fought against two of them. We used everything we had, and at the end we managed to cripple one of them while I managed to hit a lucky throw with my kunai to his neck, making him bleed out."

He paused to take a sip of his own drink before continuing. "At the time I was shaken since I had take my first life, but it wasn't nearly as bad since I had done so while on the heat of combat. It was later, in another mission, that it would sink in that I had killed when we were asked to exterminate a bandit camp."

He sighed at the mention of that mission. "You have to understand that we shinobi while under our village leader we were also the sword and shield of the country, having both policing and executing power depending on the situation. The bandit camp had outlived the mercy of the Daimyo who asked us to kill every single bandit in the camp. At first it felt like a bandit camp invasion like I had trained before, and once more I killed in the heat of the moment, but then we took those that had surrendered, only a handful few, to be executed in cold blood and each one of our team was required to take at least one live."

Another sigh and he took a sip to his drink. "Afterwards I was ready to throw up. After all it's different to kill someone to protect yourself, and another to kill someone in cold blood. Since we already had talks about killing in the academy before graduating, he had allowed me my own space to process what I had done, but since my reaction to the deaths of the bandits were so extreme he took me aside to talk with me."

He took one of my hands that were clasped in front of me, and I looked up to him and saw his sad expression. "He told me that as a shinobi I had a duty to perform both to the village and my country. Sometimes I would hate this duty, but for the sake of those under my protection, as a shinobi of the leaf I had to do it, because nobody else could, nobody else was willing. Death was part of the shinobi life, and I had to accept that I had killed and would kill again in the future."

I nodded in understanding. To complete the mission at all costs, to press on even under hardship, the have the courage to face the unknown.

"Does it become easier?"

"It varies from person to person. Some become more unhinged, while other retract within themselves. A few can't handle the stress and stop being shinobi altogether. Everyone finds their own way to cope with the stress of being a shinobi, but it's something that we all have to deal with at some point or another. That doesn't mean we have to endure that alone of course."

"Was, was it truly necessary?" I finally asked him, "was it really unavoidable? Did I really had to kill them?"

He looked at me deep in the eyes before standing up and coming to my side to hug me. It was a bit awkward, but I enjoyed the act nonetheless.

"Would sparing them endanger yourself?" He softly asked, "not the mission being a failure, but would you not return if you didn't do what you had to do?" I paused for a moment before nodding. "If so I don't really care if people would relive you for the deaths you caused. You're my friend, my partner, my team mate and I want you to come back safe always." As he stroked my hair he continued. "You know, you don't really need to have it bottled up, I'm here for you always and I won't judge you or-"

I didn't let his finish as I grabbed him tighter and let the emotions of the night flow in and I screamed and raged, while blaming everything and everyone of what happened, including Tobio and myself. He took it silently, just returning the hug while I vented my frustrations.

Once I was done I felt a bit lighter and I looked back at Tobio, who didn't had a look or disgust or pity as I had feared before, but one of acceptance and relief. "Come on, let's get to bed, you had a long night. If you want you can stay at home instead of going to school, and no Ragnarok for at least three days. A shinobi needs to have his day off too, after all."

I didn't protest and followed him back to my bed, after all he was right. It had been a long night, but I think I got stronger for it.


End file.
